The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. The Ultraviolet shawl is a tribute to the brightest stars of our universe. Everything radiates. Not just stars, but also planets, plants, animals and people. This radiation is temperature-dependent and spans the entire color palette of the rainbow — from ultraviolet to infrared. Us people give off infrared radiation, while the hottest stars in the universe radiate predominantly ultraviolet. These rare stars can reach temperatures of 30.000 °C. Their bright radiation allows us to observe them, even if they are very remote. The shades of violet in this shawl are inspired by these brightly shining stars.

The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. The Nebula shawl symbolises the birth of a star out of stardust from an old star. At the end of a star’s life, it collapses and explodes into a supernova. The remaining cloud of dust contains the building blocks for new stars and planets. This dust cloud is called a nebula. Gravitational differences within the nebula cause parts of the nebula to clump together. These precursors of stars and planets grow to full-sized celestial bodies, a proces that formed the inspiration for the Nebula shawl.

Sometimes things just happen to come together. In late spring 2020, I combined three things to create a new project: the rainbow blanket.

When I got my first loom, I had been crocheting for a couple of years already. In fact, I got inspired to give weaving a try on a yarn fair I attended to serve my crochet yarn needs. I tried out several of my favorite crochet yarns on my rigid heddle loom with different rates of success. This taught me that I could weave wonderful kitchen towels with unmercerized crochet cotton. My habit of weaving crochet cotton towels continued after I obtained my floor loom.

When experimenting with new yarn, you have no guarantee that the end-result will meet your expectations. Sometimes you need a little outside encouragement to try something you doubt will work, only to find out that the end-result is far better than you could ever expect.